


At Two in the Afternoon

by Thunderrrstruck



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Gen, High School, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26150311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderrrstruck/pseuds/Thunderrrstruck
Summary: Peter can't breathe, so he calls someone who he thinks can help.
Relationships: Michelle Jones & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	At Two in the Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same timeline as my Iron Clan fics, more or less. No direct link between them, just thought y'all should know that. :)

_ As the smoke fills his lungs and the dust begins to settle, he sees a form. Frozen, like he is, but unconscious, like he is not. A handful other people– of heroes are whisking the form up the ramps of the quinjet. _

_ Peter knows he should move, to get to that man. He wants to. He needs to. His heart is hammering, fear is taking hold. His mind is telling his feet to move, but his feet scream back resilience. They stay. He stays. And all the while, the calling of his name: “Peter! Peter!” Someone’s calling for his help. Someone is crying for his attention.– _

* * *

“Peter!”

A sharp nudge in his ribs, and he snaps into bright lights and stale air.

“Huh? What?”

He glances around at the blank faces of teenagers around him.

“Mister Parker,” the woman by the whiteboard enunciates, “were you dozing off?”

Woman at the whiteboard– _teacher!_ That’s his teacher– He’s in class! He is  _ stuck _ in class.

“Uh, no, no, sorry, Ms.– I’m fine, I’m here,” he stammers.

“If you’re so ‘here’, why don’t you answer the question,” she instructs.

“The... question?”

“Yes.” Her lips purse together and eyebrows raise expectantly. Her fingers wring together, steepling just below her sternum. “According to the board, which force cause Torque with the greatest magnitude?”

Peter’s eyes flit to the example drawn in blue dry-erase. He reads it, he knows it; he knows the answer, but the orange landscape rips through his head again. The form.  _ Oh, god, please don’t let it be him _ . He has to run. He has to save him!

“Peter?”

“C,” he throws out there but hastily pushes on, not waiting for a confirmation that he's correct, “Can I go to the bathroom?”

The teacher gives him the stink-eye that all teachers give to their misbehaving kids. But Peter holds the reputation of a good student, a well-mannered student; he never leaves class to go to the bathroom! Meaning, just this once, he could.  _ I need it _ , he silently pleads, and although her lips press further down, she shoos him along.

Peter all but bolts for the exit.

His sneakers pump the pavement. His breath rags, but it feels good; at least what he is doing feels nature. Running requires a heaving chest. It doesn’t feel like he’s about to die.

Peter swings into the men’s room, locks himself into a stall, and whips out his phone. Before his eyes even process what he’s doing, his fingers are dialing. With the freedom of not being under the surveillance of twenty pairs of eyes at once, his blood now boils and crashes through his every vein like white water rapids.

After two rings – an agonising eternity – the other end clicks and seven words fill his head with ease.

“Hey, kid. Shouldn’t you be at school?”

The next breath he takes doesn’t feel as demanding.

“I  _ am _ , Mister Stark, I just–.”

“How many times do I have to tell you; call me Tony.”

“Y-Yeah.. Tony.” His tongue feels foreign pronouncing letters that way. To him, Mister Stark will always be Mister Stark, his mentor, his support form, his...  _ Well, I really can’t be calling him that, either... _

“What’s up, Pete? Forget to do your homework? Girl trouble?”

“Uh, no-no, I just– I was in class and I...” What is he thinking, bothering Tony with something like this? The man is a father, now, and it’s not like Godzilla just came crashing through the windows, demanding a little more than Spider-Man to take him down. Peter leans forward, digging his elbows into his knees, and scrunches his eyes up tight. “You know what? I’m fine. Don’t worry, Mister– Tony. I’ll be okay.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

_ Shit _ . Is he really that transparent?

“Really, it’s nothing,” he retracts with a stutter. He holds his hand out in front of him and watches the fingers flutter with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. “Say ‘hi’ to Ms. Potts and Morgan for me.”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me–”

Too late. Peter jams his thumb into the red circle and discards the phone on top of the toilet paper dispenser before smoothing his palms against his jeans. The ice cold feeling is back to creeping its way up his throat. His stomach is already frozen yet he feels nauseated at the same time. Every thought leads him back to the battlefield, and every thought past that runs back to Titan.  And every thought past that... the inevitable.

The school-bell rings. A different kind of panic courses through him.

He stops at the sinks on his way out to splash some water in his face. The towel dispenser is empty, so he wipes his face the best he can with his long sleeves and turns on the spot to leave.

There’s one problem.

MJ stands in his way, eyeing him like he's a weirdo. (To be fair, being caught drying his face the unorthodox way means his face froze by his armpit.)

“What are you doing in here, Peter?” she asks with a deep frown, deeper than her usual.

“Me?” he returns, straightening himself to a presentable posture. “ _You’re_ the one in the boys’ bathroom.”

“Actually, no. Unlike you, I can  _ read _ stuff ,” she corrects. “This is the girls’ bathroom.”

Peter’s jaw tightens, but his cheeks flush fully red. “I, um, I didn’t notice.” He shifts around her, giving her a wide berth and rambling through a bunch of “Sorry! I’m sorry!”s (to which Michelle narrows her eyes).

“You know you’re weird, right?” she asks.

All Peter can muster is, “I know,” before he is shouldering his way through a pair of girls just filing in the restroom for themselves.

* * *

Peter makes it to his next period, pack and all, a minute after the second bell's ring. He sighs and drops his speed to a stroll. Thank god, the teacher’s back is turned, so he can slip in without being noticed. He makes it one foot from heaving onto his chair, when the teacher turns around.

“Is it safe for me to assume you were late, Peter?” he asks.

“Yes, I mean, no, I mean– I’m here before attendance, right?”

Another side-eye earned from the teacher. Another defeated slump to his desktop by Peter Parker.

As the teacher rolls on from roll call, Peter exerts all his energy into staying in the moment. He manages not to slip away from reality, but it is at the expense of missing everything being taught about Shakespearean literature.

But then, his right leg begins to shake.

And then, his eyes flit to the clock five times a minute.

And his mind once more fills with smog.

And then, the intercom blares.

_ “Peter Parker to the main office, please.” _

Peter barely has time to register the hissing and snickering of the class, the subtle points and obvious sardonic whispers of "Ooo, someone's in trouble." His heart is back to pumping. His fingers line with sweat. Wordlessly, he gathers his things, pretending his hands aren't shaking as badly as they are, and pushes his way to the exit and down the hall.

The entire walk takes forever.

The whole time, his feet feel like cinder blocks. The constant whipping from one anxiety to another puts him in danger of emotional whiplash. Small gulps of air keep him on his feet, but in all honesty, he feels as if he is at the end of his tether. How much longer will he have to tread water just to keep himself afloat? What if the next wave that comes drags him under permanently?

Peter hangs his head as he pushes at the main office’s door. He trudges up to the desk, but a figure with its back to him makes him stop halfway. Peter sucks in his bottom lip and resigns himself to wait.

_ I just want the visions to stop _ .

“I told you not to hang up on me, Pete.”

* * *

On the rooftop of some low-rise apartment building, they sit on some discarded, old patio furniture. The box of ice cream sandwiches Tony purchased five minutes ago, at the convenience store below them, sits centre stage. Peter is already halfway through his second sandwich while Tony takes his sweet time nursing his first.

“I know something’s wrong, kid,” he breaks the silence, “otherwise, I wouldn't have busted out the old nanotech to fly all the way out here.”

Instead of answering, Peter takes another chomp of his ice cream bar and studies the writing on the box.

“Queens is nice and all, I guess,” Tony continues with a shrug. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t have to…” Peter mumbles.

“Cut the crap.”

Peter swallows thickly.

“Panic attacks?”

“It’s just a little anxiety,” he replies. “It usually passes by the time I go to bed.”

“‘Usually’?” Tony harps. He twists in his chair, his body language practically begging for Peter to look at him. Peter does, and he sees overflowing concern written in brown eyes. It’s almost enough to turn his gaze back on the ice cream box, but he somehow finds the strength to maintain eye contact. “How long has this been going on?”

Peter can’t, anymore. He closes his eyes.

“Since June,” he mumbles.

“Five months,” muses Tony. When he hears someone slumping back in his chair does Peter dare a peek. In that moment, it dawns on him just how old his mentor is. The lines of his face, the grey in his hair, it all counteracts the energy he displays. His energy, even, is not the energy of youth but panic mingled with coffeejitters. Peter frowns at the man he had, until five seconds ago, thought of as larger than life.

Tony’s humanity scares Peter most of all.

Five months ago, he watched as Mister Stark came so close to dying. He waited outside his hospital room in Wakanda while his wife and daughter were the only ones inside.

Within a month, however, Tony was bouncing back with a prosthetic fitted into his arm socket. Peter saw the man smile, and waves of reassurance washed over him. If only he could take that feeling with him everywhere he went. With school’s return come Fall and Tony’s retirement and focus on fatherhood, however, the feeling soon got swept beneath the rug. And his mind was reluctant to leave the past behind.

“Five  _ months _ , Peter! You should have told me.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’m always going to worry,” he negates. “Part of being a father, kid. Whether it’s Morgan sneaking into the basement again or Will trying to eat Pepper’s shirt buttons, I’m probably never  _ not _ going to be nervous for them.”

Peter chuckles and asks quietly, “Does Will really eats shirt buttons?” He met the youngest addition to the Stark-Potts household on a couple occasions before, but he did not ever think much excitement could come from a nine-month old.

“He’ll eat anything. Point _is_ , I have a couple contacts, I can hook you up with a therapist. You don’t want this running unchecked, believe me.”

Tony stands, and Peter follows suit. Against the late October breeze, his arms feel secure and warm as Peter decides that this is a moment worthy of a hug.

“Thanks, Dad,” he says against Tony’s coat.

He can feel some tension spike in Tony's arms, but he’s too much filled with comfort to think clearly about the D-word he just dropped.

“What was that?” he hears Tony ask from above.

“Nothing,” he mumbles before breaking apart.

Tony taps the glowing triangle at his sternum, and red particles begin wrapping themselves around his body. “You need a lift home?” he offers.

“I have my suit in my bag, I think I’ll swing it.” Peter can barely continue a grin at his pun, and although, Tony displays a rather obvious eye-roll, there is a twinkle in his eyes.

“Stay safe, Pete.”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, the armour covers his face. He is completely shielded inside a red-and-gold cocoon. Peter chooses to ignore the dents and scratches in the metal, meaning that in all the time since the battle, Tony hasn’t bothered to fix them; He eyes the robotic face.

“Thanks,” he repeats.

“Consider it my early Christmas present.”

Peter waves and jokes, “Merry Christmas,” as Iron Man takes flight.

The delight coursing through him when Tony Stark carries on the joke with the same sentiment is unparalleled. Iron Man's ' _ Merry Christmas _ ' is a much nicer thing to have ringing in his head during his swing home. By the time he crawls through his bedroom window, he is breathing heavily but only from physical exertion. He hopes this means no nightmares today. He doesn't feel like there will be any. After all, at the end of the tunnel, he sees a star shine.

**Author's Note:**

> October is the perfect month to eat ice cream on the roof. Also, review! Please? It would mean so much. ;)


End file.
